Hani Al-Hasan dies

The Fath leader, Hani Al-Hasan, died. He is one of the three brothers (Khalid and Bilal are the other two, although Bilal has been close to the left) who has influenced the modern Palestinian political movement.  Khalid Al-Hasan has been the biggest influence by far: and he was one of the worst characters of the Fath movement serving as the ambassador of oil and gas princes.  He always pushed Arafat toward the right, and he was the messenger of oil kingdoms and emirates.  Hani was at first a youth leader when he studied in Germany and recruited a large number of Arab students.  He was close to Arafat who appointed him as the first PLO ambassador in Iran after the revolution.  Hani was a conservative figure: he, however, opposed Oslo, but Arafat persuaded him to "forget about it" and to come to Ramallah to serve as powerless Minister of Interior.   Hani Al-Hasan shared part of his story, or his version of the Palestinian national movement, in Helena Cobban's The PLO.   I heard Hani Al-Hasan give a talk once at AUB during the war: I remember this about that speech.  How unimpressed I was and how I felt that he spoke for two hours in a boring tone and without saying anything significant.  He reminded me of speeches by US ambassadors.  Hani al-Hasan was one of a handful surviving figures in the Fath movement: the best Fath leaders were all killed by Israel, and the worst one survive.  Look at Abu Mazen: the man never once was targeted for assassination by Israeli agents while his comrades in the movement all either survived many assassination attempts, or were actually killed by Israeli agents.   Al-Hasan was active on the Lebanese scene and engaged in meditations during the war by virtue of his marriage to daughter of former Lebanese prime minister, `Abdullah Al-Yafi.  Al-Hasan was one of those lousy PLO leaders who believed that lines of contact with the Phalanges and other pro-Israeli militias in Lebanon should be kept open.  Among the students in Lebanon who were active in Fath, Hani Al-Hasan was popular, and they all knew that he had access to `Arafat.  The father of the Hasan brothers fought with Palestinians prior to the creation of the Zionist usurping entity.